THE LAST SEFARI 42(> 



never, and if I did not cripple him, that supremely 

 cunning old bull was lost to me. 



I tried very hard for a raking shot, that should avoid 

 his fleshy rump where an expanding bullet could not kill 

 him, but should take him high up in the ribs and range 

 forward. As I fired I felt I was at least near the mark; 

 and sure enough, with a fierce, loud whistling snort, he 

 spun right around to the shot, facing me. Now he was 

 head on, and I had no mark to shoot at, for nothing was 

 visible above the tangle but the heavy black impenetrable 

 bosses of horn. He stood stamping and snorting for a 

 moment, made but a half-hearted attempt to charge, and 

 swung back into the dense bush fringing the edge of the 

 donga. As he did so, I shot through the grass where I 

 fancied his shoulder should be. We now had to go slowly 

 and carefully, for our bull was an old solitary one, about the 

 most dangerous beast, when wounded, that there is in 

 Africa or any other land. I crept forward a foot at a time, 

 parting the long grass in front of me with my rifle barrel, 

 and tried to keep Brownie from pushing himself ahead of 

 me, as he ever was inclined to do when he knew danger 

 lay in the next bit of grass. It was impossible to see any 

 sign of the wounded bull; but plentiful blood spattered 

 the cover. The tangle was eight or ten feet high hereabout, 

 but the precipitous donga was behind, and he could never 

 get out of it again should he retreat into it, if, as I believed, 

 he was severely wounded. This was no time to hurry, 

 for danger lay in the terribly thick tangled grass. 



Foot by foot, for fully forty or fifty yards, we followed on. 

 At last I made him out right in front of me only a few feet 

 away, his head held low and looking very ugly indeed. 

 The moment I made him out I shot and he sank down in 

 his tracks, stone dead. We all breathed more freely, for 

 it had been anxious work. Then we shook hands all round, 

 and I bakshished the men, not forgetting the fine bit 



